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Framing Catholicism: Jack Chick's Anti-Catholic Cartoons and the Flexible Boundaries of the Culture Wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Michael Ian Borer  and
Adam Murphree
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Abstract

In order to understand the practice of “culture wars work,” we examined the claims of a particularly vocal evangelist, Jack T. Chick. Chick is a writer and cartoonist known both positively and negatively for his “Chick tracts.” Chick tracts are small twenty-four-page black-andwhite comic books that attempt to convert the reader to Chick's particular brand of “Bible-believing” Protestant Christianity. We focused on Chick's claim about Catholicism in order to show how theological and ideological boundaries can be constructed between presumably allied religious populations. Chick presents his anti-Catholicism using three main frames: (1) the associative frame—Catholicism is not only one of many social problems but is also cause of a number of them, (2) the subversive frame—the Catholic church is a political villain, and (3) the hidden agenda frame—Catholicism has not remained true to the authoritative teachings of Christianity and has embraced a secretly progressive worldview. Investigating a culture war claims maker like Chick, who purposely disrupts what presumably would be an orthodox or conservative alliance, reveals the process of symbolic boundary making within cultural/ moral/religious conflicts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Winter 2008 , pp. 95 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2008

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References

Notes

1. Hunter, James Davison, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 34 Google Scholar.

2. Debates about the culture wars have generated a great amount of scholarship. For a few good introductions to the debate that address Americans’ cultural values and religious claims from a sociological point of view, see DiMaggio, Paul, Evans, John H., and Bryson, Bethany, “Have Americans’ Social Attitudes Become More Polarized?” American Journal of Sociology 102 (1996): 690–755 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoffman, J. P. and Miller, A. S., “Denominational Influences on Socially Divisive Issues: Polarization or Continuity?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37 (1998): 528-46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Evans, John H., Bryson, Bethany, and DiMaggio, Paul, “Opinion Polarization: Important Contributions, Necessary Limitations,” American Journal of Sociology 106 (2001): 944–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Hunter, , Culture Wars, 97 Google Scholar.

4. Ibid., 44–45.

5. See Finke, Roger and Stark, Rodney, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993 Google Scholar).

6. Hunter, , Culture Wars, 67–70 Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., 102–3.

8. Kratochwil, Friedrich, “Religion and (Inter-)National Politics: On the Heuristics of Identities, Structures, and Agents,” Alternatives 30 (2005): 133 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Chick, Jack T., “Last Rites” (Ontario, Calif.: Chick Publications, 1994)Google Scholar.

10. Chick, Jack T., “Biography of Jack Chick,” Chick Publications, http://www.chick.com/information/authors/chick.asp (accessed April 17, 2006)Google Scholar.

11. Chick, Jack T., “English Chick Cartoon Tracts,” Chick Publications, http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractlist.asp (accessed May 22, 2006)Google Scholar.

12. Chick, “Biography of Jack Chick.”

13. When studying social problems, social constructionists Gale Miller and James Holstein have advocated focusing on what they call “social problems work,” which is broadly defined as “any and all activity implicated in the recognition, identification, interpretation, and definition of conditions that are defined as social problems.” In line with this perspective, we see “culture wars work” as a subset of social problems work that pertains specifically to cultural/moral/religious conflicts. See Miller, Gale and Holstein, James, “On the Sociology of Social Problems,” Perspectives on Social Problems 1 (1989): 5 Google Scholar.

14. Jack T. Chick, “Statement of Faith,” Chick Publications, http://www.chick.com/information/general/statementoffaith.asp (accessed November 13, 2007).

15. For summaries and analyses of fundamentalisms, see Marty, Martin and Scott Appleby, R., eds., Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Woodberry, Robert D. and Smith, Christian S., “Fundamentalism et al.: Conservative Protestants in America,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 25–56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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17. Kratochwil, “Religion and (Inter-)National Politics,” 128.

18. Ibid.

19. Smith, Christian, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 126 Google Scholar.

20. Smith uses the case of American evangelicals to establish a “subcultural identity” theory of religious strength. He argues that evangelicalism thrives on being a distinct belief system, where members engage other Christians and non-Christians, often creating tension as an attempt to pose a threat to outsiders. These elements help reinforce and fortify evangelicals’ collective subcultural identity. Smith's framework clearly elucidates the motivations behind Chick's aggressive claims making. For an in-depth explanation of Smith's theoretical framework, see Smith, American Evangelicalism, chap. 4.

21. Catholicism is addressed explicitly as the starting point in, for example, Jack T. Chick, “Are Roman Catholics Christians?” (Ontario, Calif.: Chick Publications, 1985), and Jack T. Chick, “Why Is Mary Crying?” (Ontario, Calif.: Chick Publications, 1987). Claims about Catholicism are told through narratives, such as the supposed pagan history of the Eucharist, the tale of a suicidal priest, and the fictionalized afterlife of a dead Catholic, in, respectively, Jack T. Chick, “The Death Cookie” (Ontario, Calif.: Chick Publications, 1988); Jack T. Chick, “The Man in Black” (Ontario, Calif.: Chick Publications, 2003); and Chick, “Last Rites.”

22. Greenberg, Josh, “Framing and Temporality in Political Cartoons: A Critical Analysis of Visual News Discourse,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 39 (2002): 183–84Google Scholar.

23. Goffman, Erving, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 1974)Google Scholar. For a good review of relatively recent reformulations of the methods and goals of frame analysis, see Benford, Robert D. and Snow, David A., “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 11–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Greenberg, “Framing and Temporality in Political Cartoons,” 183.

25. Morris, Ray, “Visual Rhetoric in Political Cartoons: A Structuralist Approach,” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 8 (1993): 195–210 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. Loseke, Donileen R., Thinking about Social Problems: An Introduction to Constructionist Perspectives (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2005), 26 Google Scholar.

27. Greenberg, “Framing and Temporality in Political Cartoons,” 184.

28. Chick, Jack T., “The Attack,” Chick Publications, http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0031/0031_01.asp (accessed April 17, 2006).Google Scholar

29. Chick, “The Death Cookie.”

30. Jack T. Chick, “Here He Comes!” (Ontario, Calif.: Chick Publications, 2003).

31. Jack T. Chick, “Holocaust,” Chick Publications, http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0054/0054_01.asp (accessed April 17, 2006).

32. Hunter, Culture Wars, 44-45.

33. See, respectively, Chick, “Man in Black,” Jack T. Chick, “The Story Teller,” Chick Publications, http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0062/0062_01.asp (accessed April 17, 2006), and Chick, “The Attack.” 34. See “The Star” (Ontario, Calif.: Chick Publications, 2006).

35. For a good introduction to the field of visual culture studies, see Mirzoeff, Nicholas, ed., The Visual Culture Reader (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar.